Saturday, April 28

Randall Tobias resigns. Sadly, having another senior politician (or religious leader) resign due to being caught in a sex scandal is itself not news. But this one is especially upsetting since Tobias was Bush's selected policy leader for HIV/AIDS funding, and his (and the Catholic church's) anti-condom safe sex positioning clearly kills thousands of people every year.
9:02 AM; digg

Tuesday, April 24

My first trip to Africa, to do research for global health technology work I'm doing at Harvard. This trip was heartbreaking, but also filled with hope. You can see some of my photos and notes, and I will add more notes later.
10:17 AM; digg

Sunday, April 22

Waiters stole credit card info resulting in three million bucks in unauthorized charges.

I feel safer buying online, from reputable companies, than I do in giving my credit card to some workers in some restaurants or gas stations.

In general, the credit card business has been described as a sleazy industry, with aggressive practices. But in some ways, these practices may have evolved to protect legitimate businesses and consumers from sleazy consumers and businesses. :)

For example, if a business gets an account to process credit cards, and is then found to be misusing that account, I'd hope it would make it harder for that business to later get another account to accept credit cards?
9:14 AM; digg

Wednesday, April 18

People's Voice has Kayak nominated for best tourism site. If you like Kayak, please cast your vote! :)
10:38 AM; digg

Monday, April 16

Save your vision! Every 20 minutes of computer time, focus at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Try 202020 from Ron Lohse, and tell him I sent you. :)
11:37 AM; digg

Saturday, April 7

Goog 411 is a free, automated voice service to lookup phone numbers. (Damn the phone companies for charging us $1.50 for each 411 call.) Did I mention that Goog 411 was free?

Separately, if you are not yet using Google SMS, you should, if you want to know just about anything while you are out with only your phone. The sample queries from Google's SMS page include:

Category: Example
Local Listings: sushi 94040
Weather: weather NYC
Flight updates: LH454 or AA 2111
Airline information: United Airlines
Sports: lakers
Movies: the departed 94110
Stock Quotes: tgt
Glossary: define zenith
Zip Code: 72202
Translation: translate hello in french
Driving Directions: pasadena CA to 94043
Web Snippets: g hubble telescope
Q&A: abraham lincoln birthday
Area Code: 650
Froogle: price ipod player 40gb
Calculator: 1 US pint in liters
Currency Conversion: 8 usd in yen
Help: local
6:47 AM; digg

Wednesday, April 4

I work with the Boston-based non-profit Partners in Health (PIH). This small organization is changing world health through a disciplined rollout of a new model for community-based care. Their work started in Haiti and Boston, but has now spread to other countries including Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Rwanda.

Today the PIH team started an exciting experiment for online health. They published their HIV Treatment Guide in a new online website which allows comments from anyone in the world.

Please see PIH Model Online.

How will this work? Will a critical (life-saving) online medical manual get filled with inaccurate comments? Will readers be able to make a distinction between accurate and inaccurate postings?

We will see. What do you think?
3:36 PM; digg

Monday, April 2

"The poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted; Let these be your God." (Swami Vivekananda).

A found that great quote on gramseva.org, a non-profit organization in South Gujarat, India.
11:51 AM; digg

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